Luke Haynes’ Fine Art Quilts Featured at C Gallery: A Show Worth Driving to Los Alamos, CA to See!

In Events by Zoe Nathan

P1080204a After arriving at Connie Rohde’s C Contemporary Art Gallery in Los Alamos, CA, I was surprised to meet the artist of the quilts and discover not a savvy middle aged Southern woman, but a very young man seemingly in the prime of his career. Having grown up in the South and studied art and architecture at Cooper Union, Haynes began experimenting with quilting and has developed a very unique repertoire of colorful fabric mosaics that enliven subjects from the icons of this latest show, American Nostalgia,  to those closer to the artist. More of Haynes’ work is displayed on his website. The images in this show were chosen in an unusual manner: through the tallied results of a questionnaire collected from 700 people on what icon they felt represented America. The results were extremely varied, and consensus was reached in groups of less than a dozen in most cases and from only 200 answers sharing commonalities, suggesting Americans draw a sense of national identity from a multitudinous bank of ideas and concepts. P1080199 Klimt-like gold quilt of American icon, Michael Jackson. [The squarish embroidered signature reminds me of an industrialized version of Gustav Klimt’s boxy signature.] P1080200 P1080202 P1080207 Pie and Flag were the two most common ideas identified in the survey results and thus were combined in this piece. P1080205 P1080210 P1080211 No wine and cheese at this opening! American nostalgic food items only: soda, beer, hot dogs, and apple pie! P1080212 P1080208 Detail of President Lincoln. The photo this was based on was chosen for its ability to convey the humble and quiet nature of this nation’s 16th president.